The Cure for Irrelevance: Locate Your Idea

Last week, I had…

• Two entirely different conversations,

• In two entirely different contexts,

• With two entirely different people…

…Who both had the same complaint about an idea.

“It’s irrelevant.”

The first was a curator of a…erm…let’s call it a “short-form talk event.” He was looking at a stack of idea submissions. He reported that, idea after idea, he had the same thoughts. “Generic.” “Not new.” And again, “irrelevant.”

The second was my dissertation advisor. She was describing what she sees when she’s reviewing papers submitted to journals or edited volumes, those themed collections where alignment with the topic matters. A lot. “Sometimes the ideas are good,” she said, “but they aren’t framed in a way that fits with the theme of the volume or the audience of the journal. So they come across as irrelevant.”

Two kinds of irrelevance. Both entirely avoidable.

Let’s take them one at a time.

One of the fastest ways for an idea to be dismissed is when someone thinks, “Seen it, heard it, already been done.” Even worse is when they start to wonder, “Why didn’t you already know that, too?”

That doesn’t just tank the credibility of your idea. It tanks the credibility of YOU.

Journalists call the fix for this type of irrelevance sourcing. Before they publish anything, they ask:

• What already exists?

• Who else has said this?

• What’s the existing conversation?

They do this so they can see what more there is to add, avoid being caught not knowing what’s already out there, and check that what they’re saying is actually true (or at least verifiable).

You can do the same thing. A simple search, in a search engine or an AI, can tell you:

• Who else is known for a topic or an idea

• What they say about it and what angle they take

• What work they’ve already done or found

Pro tip #1: Name the thing. If you’re not sure what your topic or phenomenon is called (which makes searching hard!), describe your idea to your favorite AI and ask, “What disciplines in academia look at something similar to this? What do they call it?” Now you know what you’re looking for

Pro tip #2: Find the big names. Once you know what it’s called, ask, “Who are the leading scholars of and respected experts on [concept/topic X]?” This tells you who the “names” are. For those still alive and working, you can go follow them on LinkedIn, Substac, or wherever they publish. You can also go to Google Scholar (yes, it exists!)! and look up their papers. Hint: papers with high “Cited by” numbers tend to be well-known and well-respected. That said, they also tend to reinforce a “pale and male” bias, so use it as a filter, but not a failure point.

Pro tip #3: Get the canonical references. Next, ask yoru favorite AI, “What’s the canonical reference for [concept/topic X]?” That will deliver what scholars consider “the” main text(s). Often, that’s a full book. You can go get and read that book, of course, but you can also ask what studies the book is based on, and then go straight to those. You can also ask “Given my idea, which chapters would be the most useful for me to focus on?” And if you’re still just in exploration mode, “Is there a scholarly article that summarizes [concept/topic X]?” to decide whether to track down the book. Follow up any of those questions with, “Can you please give me the biographical information for that source, so I can go find it”? That will give you the information you need to (renewe your library card!) and track it down.

Pro tip #4: Update your map. A lot of theories get updated—that’s what scientists and scholars do. So, once you know the canonical references and theories, ask, “What have been the major extensions, updates, or critiques of [that source, theory, model, etc.]”? This keeps your understanding current instead of stuck at the original publication date.

Pro tip #5: Use (scholarly) semantic search. If you have access, try Google Scholar Labs. It lets you use semantic search, where you can ask your question in normal, human language, and get relevant academic papers back.

Perplexity is generally my favorite tool for all of these (aside from Google Scholar, obviously!), as it does some of its own validation of sources.

After all of that, your job (which, if you really want to be a leader of thinking, you can’t outsource to AI): go and read those sources.

• Start with the abstracts to see if they seem relevant or interesting to you.

• If yes, read the Introduction, which will give you an overview.

• Then, skip to what’s usually called “Discussion” or “Conclusion” to get the rest of the story.

• Finally, take a look at the sources they cite, and see if you can find ones that are interesting to you and read those (that’s called backward citation tracking).

So, no, you don’t have to read the whole paper, and you can usually skip the “methodology” section if it as one, particularly if you’re just trying to “get” the concept.

The bar to reach is: Read them until you understand others’ work and ideas in your topic just as well—or better—than the gatekeeper that holds the future or your idea in their hands.

I understand the hesitation, if you’re feeling it. It can be more than a little nerve-wracking to go looking and risk finding out that someone has already had your idea. Maybe multiple someones. And I am sorry to tell you but, as someone who has spent the last 10+ years working in ideas, I can say that the odds are very strong that they have.

But which is worse: finding that out yourself, or having someone else find it for you? I know which one I’d choose (the first).

Thankfully, there’s an upside. If your idea does have company, the sourcing work gives you something incredibly valuable. Multiple somethings.

• First, you get outside validation for your idea. (Yay, defensibility!)

• Second, you’ll see where you do—and don’t—agree with what’s already been said or done, or even how they’ve reached their conclusion. And that means you have a ready answer to the question, “Here’s how this is different from what X, Y, and Z have already said?”

Both mean you’ve anticipated and addressed some of the likeliest objections before they’re ever raised.

Even better, if you’re doing that landscape research and you find other people who’ve studied something very close to your idea? It means you’re onto something. It also gives you options: replicate what they’ve done to see if you get the same results (that counts as legitimate research, by the way), disagree with their approach and say why, or build on their finding by asking what else might be true.

Sometimes, though, someone will see that your defensible, differentiated idea is new, but they don’t see how it aligns with what they care about. So let’s get on to that second form of irrelevance.

Contrary to a lot of advice (and practice), instead of asking, “How do I change my idea for this audience? Ask:

“What about my idea connects to what these people are already looking for?”

And yes, that requires a research, too (sense a theme?). So, go explore your potential audience.

• What do they care about right now?

• What’s on their mind?

• What are they already trying to achieve or avoid (in their words)?

This isn’t about shapeshifting your idea to match them. It’s about holding true to your idea and figuring out why someone would be interested in it on their own terms.

In academia, this is what a literature review actually does. It isn’t about just being able to “cite things,” to name who else said it, who said it first, and (too often overlooked) whose work you learned it from first.

As important as all that is, a literature review is just as much, if not more, about “situating” the idea. It’s locates your idea within the landscape of other relevant ideas.

Think of it like being the tourist board for the city of your idea.

You can’t move a city to where different people are. No, your job is to figure out how to talk to different types of tourists about why they’d love to visit your city.

• You talk to surfers about your beach.

• You talk to hikers about your trails.

• You talk to shoppers about your shops.

But all of those are part of the same city. The only thing that changesis how you talk about it.

The same is true for your idea. Don’t move your idea to meet an audience. Draw the map from the audience to your idea. Different audiences will find different aspects of your idea important:

• The outcome it delivers

• The problem it solves

• How it solves it,

• Why it solves it that way

• All of the above

Over time, the only way to establish your idea for the long-term is to allow it to grow roots, to tie into the ecosystem of what’s already there, and then led it spread to cover more and more ground, so more and more people can find what they need in it.

There are many ways to build on work that’s already out there. The worst thing you can do is make it look like you didn’t bother to check. If the ethical reasons to cite others’ work don’t sway you, hopefully that reputational reason will.

Your idea deserves that extra effort:

• The check to see who else is already there

• The work to locate it in the landscape

• The time to understand the context it will land in,

• The thought it takes to find the most fitting place for it to live

Even if you’ve genuinely found unclaimed territory, you still have to know what the surrounding landscape looks like, so you can show people how to get there. You have to be able to show how it connects to the whole.

When you can see the whole picture, other people are more likely to, as well.

Until next time,

Tamsen

The through‑line here is simple: your work only matters to other people when it enters a conversation already in progress. Ideas don’t grow in isolation. They take root in existing ecosystems of thought and spread when they connect to what’s already there

On locating your idea in existing conversation:

• Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s They Say / I Say is the most accessible entry point I know for how to “enter the conversation.” Their central claim: your “I say” only makes sense as a response to a clear “they say.”

• Karl Weick’s work on sensemaking is the deeper theoretical grounding: meaning is made by placing something new in relation to what’s already known. He treats reality as an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order, not as a set of isolated facts. Side note: I’m reading this book in full right now, and It. Is. Amazing.

On audience alignment as fit, not compromise:

• Psychology gives a cleaner account of fit: construal level theory shows that people think concretely about what feels near and abstractly about what feels far. Your audience’s current concerns fix where your idea needs to live—high‑level principle, mid‑level pattern, or low‑level practice—if it’s going to register as relevant

• Jerome Bruner’s work on narrative adds the why: we treat ideas as answers to situations of ‘trouble’—mismatches between how the world is and how we think it should be. If your idea doesn’t clearly speak to the trouble your audience recognizes, it lands as irrelevant, no matter how elegant it is.”

On finding prior work as good news:

• Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (summary version here) is the landmark account of how ideas gain traction by belonging to a paradigm, not by standing apart from all prior work. Normal science happens inside a paradigm; crises and revolutions still grow out of it.

• For a more general, shorter, yet still solid explanation of why cite at all, here’s what Yale has to say about it

On systems for how to do rigorous work faster, more efficiently, and with the ethical use of AI:

• For practical systems on doing rigorous work efficiently and using AI ethically, follow Dr. Lennart Nacke’s (non-academic) work. His recent writing on AI‑augmented research emphasizes keeping human judgment, critical thinking, and methodological rigor at the center, with automation serving specific, well‑chosen roles I hired him as my dissertation coach, and he’s taught me so much about what rigor actually looks like.